Putting His Socks On
by Queen Edmund Pevensie
Summary: 7x01. In the aftermath of Sam's collapse of the lab, they try to piece Sam back together again.
1. Part One

Dean's heart stops when Sam collapses. He doesn't really have time to process anything about Cas before he's next to Sam and dragging him out of the lab and into the nearest car so he can look at Sam, really look at him to see if he's hurt.

By the time they're outside, Sam's clutching onto Dean like he'll never let go and Dean might just be okay with that if Sam wasn't bleeding out of his hand all over Dean's jacket.

"It's okay, Sammy," he promises, but he doesn't believe it this time. Dean doesn't even know if Sam can hear him. He pries the fingers of Sam's injured hand off of his jacket and holds it out in front of him.

Sam's squinting at his hand too, like he can't remember cutting it open, or can't figure out where all the blood is coming from. If he's being honest with himself, he can't figure out much of anything right now, not even why it feels like his head is ready to explode.

But he can figure out Dean, and Dean is staring at his hand like it's the biggest problem they've got right now, and that's good enough for Sam, so he looks at his hand too, forces his mouth to move around the words in his head, or at least the words he _thinks_ are in his head, but he can't really hear because there's a ringing kind of noise in his ears that's making it hard to be sure of anything.

"It's bad, huh?" he says, or thinks he says, but it comes out as a grunt that makes Dean look up and shake his head.

"No, it's not too bad," Dean promises. "There's a little glass in there, but we can patch you up." He tries to smile supportively at Sam, but he feels more like passing out than anything else. _At least_, he thinks, _that's the one thing I am sure of; we can definitely take care of the cut on Sam's hand_. _It might not even scar too bad. _

Once Dean promises him that the only physical pain Sam is one hundred percent positive he can feel is only a scratch and not life threatening , Sam lets the feeling of exhaustion that's been threatening to take him over since he woke up in the panic room wash over him and his head slumps forward. Dean's voice goes up about an octave, and Sam knows that Dean is telling him to stay awake, but he can't imagine what for. He's still trying to figure it out when he's aware of a stinging in his hand, but he doesn't look up to see what's happening. Sam just lets his head fall even farther forward, and it lands on something solid. Solid and soft and warm and it takes some of the pressure in his head away, and that distant image of something burning dulls too, so Sam decides he's never going to move his head from this spot, right here.

Dean shifts under Sam, who groans in protest, and Dean ignores him until Sam is settled in the front seat of a car that is _not _Dean's, and Dean is ready to get them back to Bobby's, with Bobby and the Impala in tow.

He turns to Sam and says, "Get some sleep."

Deans starts the car and Sam falls asleep, even though he's still trying to figure out if Dean was really addressing him.

* * *

Sam wakes up on a couch with Dean hovering over him. Wherever he's at is familiar to him, looks, feels, smells familiar, but he's having a hard time remembering anything familiar but Dean. He can't even remember what happened or why his head hurts, but Dean is smiling, so everything must be okay. Sam reaches out an arm to grab onto Dean, and as he does so a stabbing image of the only other thing he can remember besides his brother flashes before his eyes and he clutches onto the closest thing to him, Dean's arm.

"You're awake," Dean sighs, relief flooding his voice. He sits down in front of Sam, slowly so as not to disturb Sam's desperate grip, and he takes hold of Sam's other hand, unwraps the blood-soaked gauze and inspects it carefully. Dean cleaned thoroughly, but Sam put up so much of a fight while he was unconscious, Dean put off the stitches as long as he could. Sam's inspecting the wound again too, but he can't really focus on it. He seems more out of it than earlier and he's still clutching onto Dean's arm like his life depends on it. Dean tries not to think about how it might. "You need stitches, Sammy, okay?" Dean says.

Sam nods even though the only thing he heard clearly over all the fire in the room was his name, but he nods anyway because he knows, or _thinks_ he knows, that Dean's not going to hurt him.

Dean takes a deep breath, keeps Sam's left hand on his lap and his right hand on his arm, and turns around to reach for the first aid kit. He pulls out a needle and Sam stares at it suspiciously. _It's just a little needle,_ he says to himself. _It can't hurt you. Besides,_ he thinks, _Dean's got it._

"This is going to hurt a little, okay?"Dean warns, watching Sam watch the needle. "Hey, look at me," he growls seriously, and Sam does. It's the first sign that Sam's shown real comprehension of a full sentence since he collapsed at the lab, and that's a good thing, as far as Dean is concerned. "I'm going to give you stitches. You're not going to like it, but you're going to feel better after it's done." Dean doesn't tack on the "I promise" at the end like he wants to because he can't promise Sam something like that ever again, but Sam's looking at him with big, trusting eyes, so Dean feels like he might as well have. "Just don't think about it," Dean suggests.

Sam can't really think about anything, but part of him realizes that if he says it like that then Dean will worry, so he laughs weakly. "No problem," he says. Or tries to say. His lips feel swollen and his tongue feels heavy.

Dean tries a smile too, but even to Sam, who is seeing everything thorough a thick blanket of smoke can tell it's weaker than Sam's laugh. He closes his eyes when Dean sticks the needle into his hand and doesn't open them, even though there's a man smirking at him behind his eyelid who is stringing him up on a meat-hook. Sam can't think who the man is, but there's a name on the tip of his tongues that he's afraid to say. If he says it, then he'll remember, and voice that sounds a lot like Dean's is telling him that remembering is bad.

Instead, Sam thinks about Dean's eyes, green and sincere, and a million half-remembered memories of memories of those eyes, and how they look when they're scared. Sam supposes that's how they look right now. Sam's scared stiff and he can't remember why, so it must be something important for Dean to be terrified too. Instead, Sam focuses on Dean's rough hand cradling Sam's as he works delicately to patch Sam up. Instead, Sam tries not to feel anything but his skin being tugged together. It doesn't hurt, at least not like the pain in his side where an even larger needle is weaving in and out, poking gaping holes in his abdomen.

"Okay, Sammy, I'm all done," Dean says suddenly. Sam opens his eyes and looks at Dean. The pain in his side disappears. Dean is wrapping Sam's hand in a new white strip of gauze, smiling at him shakily. "We're gonna get you upstairs now, alright?" Dean tells Sam, standing up in such a way that Sam could keep his hand around Dean's arm. Sam stands up too, using Dean for support. He wouldn't be able to do it without his brother.

They get to the bottom of the stairs before Sam stops. He squints up into the dark hallway. He thinks he heard something moving up there and he freezes to listen, just to be sure.

"What's wrong, Sammy?" Dean asks. He's squinting up the stairs too, but he doesn't know what he's looking for.

A word pops into Sam's mind. One syllable and even though he can't figure out what it means, he knows that Dean will understand. "Hell," he whispers, and just like the name of the man with the meat-hooks behind Sam's eyes, saying the name opens the floodgate, and suddenly, he _remembers, _and remembering is bad. Knowing where the fire in the house is coming from doesn't make it easier to put out. "I'm –I'm in Hell," Sam gasps.

Dean gasps too, and Sam collapses. He catches him, but only so that Sam doesn't crack his head open on the stairs. The lay in a huddle of long limbs and unknowable nightmares on the bottom step. Dean twists his arms around Sam's middle, whispering dutifully to his brother. "No, you're not. You're not in Hell. You're _out, _Sammy. I promise. You're not in Hell. Not anymore."

They sit on the bottom the steps for an hour, but it feels like months. Months for Sam watching Hell flash before his eyes, and months for Dean trying to summon the willpower to drag them both upstairs instead of spending the rest of eternity of the steps. Sam turns in towards Dean, burying his face in his brothers jacket, and Dean prays that one day he'll be able to laugh about this, but he knows he won't.

* * *

There's a voice calling his name, and it sounds concerned, but not frightened, so it's not his brother's voice. He fights through a cloud of Hell to get to it and finally, Dean opens his eyes to see Bobby standing over him and Sam. There are bags of groceries on the floor beside Bobby, and Dean thinks he can see his car through the window.

"You boys okay?" asks Bobby.

Dean grunts and nods. Sam is still sleeping against Dean's chest. He's got a fist full of Dean's shirt twisted in one hand and a clump of his own hair in the other. "Help me get him upstairs," Dean says to Bobby.

Bobby pulls an unconscious Sam off of Dean, and Dean is forced to follow because Sam just tightens his grip on Dean's jacket. Once Dean is standing upright and solid, he takes most of his brother's weight and sighs. "Sammy," he says softly. "Can you wake up? You're too big for me to carry up the stairs." Sam's eyelids flutter and his mouth opens a little to let out a tiny groan. "That's it, Sammy," says Dean encouragingly, but there's no hiding the edge of panic in his voice. "That's it. Just for a second. Wake up, just so we can get you upstairs and in bed."

Sam's knees buckles a little, but Dean and Bobby catch him underneath his arms and hoist him up. Sam shudders away from Bobby's touch, but they get him upstairs in less than fifteen minutes with Dean keeping up a litany of praise towards his brother, at least to keep Sam's mind off of Hell. Sam doesn't say anything. He doesn't give any indication that he can understand Dean at all.

Once they're upstairs, Dean takes all of Sam's weight and leads him into a spare bedroom, the one they use when Sam's not in the panic room or they're too tired to go upstairs and just crash on the couch. The beds are too small for both of them, especially for Sam, but it's better than the couch and cleaner than a motel. Dean drops Sam as gently as he can manage onto the bed and Sam collapses. Dean works diligently, pulling off Sam's boots, and wiping the blood off of his face. He works Sam's shirt off and somehow changes his brother out of his jeans. He won't mention it to Sam when he wakes up. It will be like none of this ever happened once Sammy wakes up._ If_ he wakes up.

When Sam's out of his dirty, bloodstained, sweat-soaked clothes, Dean looks his brother over. Sam hasn't moved a muscle and Dean hopes he isn't remembering Hell. He looks so peaceful; it's so easy for Dean to pretend that Sam's just sleeping or that Sam _can't _remember Hell, even if it means the worst for Sam's body, but Dean knows even that's not true. Dean knows that Sam is in agony, that he's reliving every moment of torture he suffered to save a world that never did anything but hurt him. It's palpable to Dean, and he feels like he could throw up.

Dean leaves Sam's side, and he leaves Sam on top of the blankets because Dean knows better than anyone that Hell is hot. He knows that he won't be sleeping under blankets tonight. The blankets are worse than heat. They're restrictive and suffocating, and Dean knows more about Hell, more about torture than any other living person on the planet, except for maybe his unconscious little brother, so there won't be any blankets tonight.

Bobby is waiting for Dean outside the room. Dean stares blankly at Bobby for few seconds before he says so quietly so no one can hear, "I'm so scared."

But the only thing quieter than Dean's voice is the house, so even Sam, bruised and beaten, and trapped in his own mind, hears him.


	2. Part Two

It takes all the willpower he has left to open his eyes. Sam doesn't know why, but he can't shake the feeling that he has to. He wakes up alone, staring at the ceiling, and he tries to remember why it feels like he got hit by a bus, but everything is hazy and he can only remember spurts of agony and fire, which might explain the bus thing, he realizes during a second where the throbbing in his head subsides enough so he can think.

He's uncomfortable on his back, so he rolls over. He tries to, at least, but he doesn't seem to be able to move. He tries not to panic, tries to think of any rational reason that would explain it, and he remembers the feeling of being tied up to get his insides carved out. A voice calls his name and he tries to move his head to see who it is, who's talking to him, but even that movement is restricted, so he's left staring at the white cracked ceiling. It's like a canvas for his panic and every memory he has of being tied up flood before his eyes and is painted in blood on the ceiling. The voice is growing louder, but not clearer, and there are people Sam can't identify splattered above him. He cries out in pain or a desperate need to help the strangers. There's a soft touch on his hand that startles him, and Sam recoils in fear, but he can't move, so his hand stays where it is until his whole body is lifted up to a sitting position and he's left looking down at long legs and a scratchy looking comforter. A voice is whispering in his ear, but Sam can't understand what it's saying.

A glass is pushed roughly into Sam's shaking hands, and another hand appears to keep it steady, and together the three hands lift the glass to Sam's lips. He squeezes them shut in a moment of clarity before anything can pass through them.

"Sammy," the voice says beside him, and then it continues, rambling soothingly, before Sam realizes he can move his own body again, and looks towards the voice and sees a very familiar pair of eyes. Dean smiles tiredly at his brother, and looks back at the glass. He says something else, and even though Sam can't understand what Dean is saying, he thinks he knows what he wants.

And maybe this time it's actually Dean.

So Sam swallows the water and lays back down, curled into the pillow.

After Dean is sure Sam is sound asleep he goes downstairs, eats half a sandwich, uses the bathroom, and goes back upstairs to sit with Sam until he wakes up again. He sits there for hours, watching Sam sleep fitfully, wishing he could do something, anything for his brother, knowing that he can't, at least not right now.

Bobby pops in a couple of times to check on them, but Dean's answer is always the same. They're fine, he insists, but Bobby knows he's lying.

"Why don't you go work on your car?" Bobby suggests at last. "Sam's not going anywhere, and it'll do you some good to get some air."

Dean stands up and grabs his drink. He lifts it up to his lips, but he just lets it sit stagnant in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. . "I'm fine," he growls, and he slams the whiskey back on the table. It splashes a little and Sam stirs. "I gotta do something, Bobby," Dean says helplessly.

"You can't do anything more for him now, Dean," Bobby insists. "I'll come get you if he needs anything," he promises.

Dean looks wistfully out the window. "Don't touch him," Dean says. He checks Sam over one more time before he leaves the room.

* * *

Dean's been working on his car for about fifteen minutes when Bobby comes outside. He's mostly just been staring at it irritably, and he lets out a sigh, relieved, when Bobby stops at his side.

"How's Sam?" Dean asks without making eye contact with Bobby.

"Asking for you," Bobby answers nonchalantly.

"He's awake?" Dean exclaims indignantly. He can't explain the rising anger in his stomach, but the fact that Sam's awake, and Bobby's standing here talking him to like it's as interesting as the weather feels like a personal injustice to Dean.

"A little," Bobby says, but Dean doesn't care about qualifiers. "His eyes are open and he's speaking."

"That's good," says Dean, already halfway to Sam without checking to make sure Bobby was behind him. "What's he saying?"

"I don't know," Bobby says.

They stop at Sam's bed. His eyes are wide open and his mouth is moving frantically, but he doesn't seem to be awake. And the words he's muttering under his breath don't make any sense to Dean. They don't even seem to be English. There's a startling possibility nagging at the back of Dean's mind that he doesn't want to think about. But his mouth is moving, asking the question he doesn't want to know the answer to, not really. "Is he speaking Enochian?" Deans asks.

"Fluently," Bobby answers gruffly.

"Awesome," Dean sighs, but he sits on the edge of Sam's bed anyway. He brushes the hair out of Sam's eyes and tries to figure out what the hell he's supposed to do for his brother.

Dean rubs Sam's knee. Sam is quaking beneath his hand, curled in on himself; he's shivering, Dean realizes, but Dean's still a little wary about blankets. He stares at Sam for a good few minutes, oblivious to Bobby looking over his shoulder, before he groans and slowly raises himself off of Sam's bed with a creak. He pulls a pair of Sam's socks out of his back and sits back down, positioning himself on the other end of the bed so he could put them on.

Sam blinks himself awake, slowly and groggily, trying to focus on Dean tugging socks over his feet. "Dean," Sam groans tiredly. Dean tosses his head back to smile at Sam.

"I'm putting socks on," Dean explains. "You looked cold, but I don't think you're quite ready for a blanket," he says. "I don't think _I'm _ready for a blanket," he adds darkly.

Sam stares at Dean blankly, because between the headache and the inexplicable fear that something is wrong, Sam didn't understand a word that Dean just said. There's something he wants to tell Dean. There are a lot of things that Sam wants to tell Dean, but he can't seem to find the words to say them, so he settles on the numb feeling pricking its way across his whole body. "Cold," he says.

Dean frowns. He doesn't really have the time or the patience to learn a new language, but he keeps his head down, concentrating on fitting the socks over Sam's huge feet.

Sam's hands appear under Dean's nose, and they brush against Dean's. They're freezing, and Sam is muttering something irritably in Enochian under his breath. He shoves Dean's hands off his ankles and leans farther forward to pull his socks up. He pauses suddenly and covers his eyes with his hand, but he takes a deep breath and tries again.

Sam freezes once more, halted by a voice attached to nothing and no one. It's sharp and cruel and cuts through his soul and it makes him quake with fear and rage and pain. It's telling him if he moves a muscle, Dean will die, and that's just the start of the havoc it will reap, so Sam freezes, tongue between his teeth for concentration. He can't look up at Dean to make sure he's all right; he just has to sit here and hope Dean will leave so he'll be okay.

Dean sighs and pulls Sam's socks over his heels. Sam's feet are so cold that the hair on Dean's arm bristles when his hand brushes against them, and he's not really sure how that's even possible, but he is sure that it isn't good. He knows it's not good that Sam isn't moving, hardly breathing.

Dean pushes Sam backwards so he's lying down, not crunched up, poised to put his own socks on until his muscles tense up, and then Dean leaves the room and Sam relaxes because he can hear Dean's voice rise and fall anxiously in the hallway, and that's enough to drown out the sound of any other noise.

* * *

Dean comes back a little later with an unopened bottle of water under his arm and a bowl of chicken noodle soup –the kind with the noodles shaped into stars and moons –and a couple of packs of saltines balanced on a tray. But when he gets upstairs, Sam is asleep, sound asleep, and as much as Dean wants to wake him up so he can get some water, Dean places the tray down on the nightstand and sits down next to his brother with the bottle between his knees, waiting for Sam to wake up.

The longer Dean sits there with Sam's breath pulsing evenly against Dean's leg, the more anxious Dean becomes. He imagines all of the states Sam might wake up in, and with each new nightmare, the hand around his heart that's been holding on tightly for the better part of four years squeezes a little harder, so that before long, Dean can't breathe. He rubs the spots out of his eyes and pushes Sam's hair out of his face, and takes the tray back downstairs, dumps the soup down the drain and smashes the ceramic bowl and leaves the shards on Bobby's floor.


	3. Part Three

Sam wakes up with a heavy tongue and a mouth full of cotton. He pushes himself up and looks around warily. There's a dull thump that startles him, but he looks towards the noise anyway. A full, sealed, bottle of water is rolling around on the wood paneled floor, and Sam bends forward to pick it up. His fingers aren't working with his body; everything in him is lagging behind like they've been asleep for a week. He fumbles with the cap for a few minutes until it finally snaps free. It flies off in Sam's hand, and his other is jostled by the sudden movement, spilling water all over his lap. He doesn't even notice.

He raises a shaking hand up to his lips and gulps down the water. A nagging knot in the knolls of his stomach tell him to stop, but he's so thirty he can't listen.

Sam drinks the whole bottle without coming up for air. When he's done, he's panting and his stomach feels funny, like it's filled with jello, but his tongue doesn't feel like it's stuck to the roof of his mouth and his esophagus isn't burning, so he considers it to be a success. He discards the bottle, hollow and dripping, at his feet, and rolls onto his front, burying his head in his pillow, not thinking about the water.

* * *

The next time he wakes up he doesn't open his eyes. He lays unmoving, breathing in the scent of his pillow, pretending he's not in more pain than he can remember being in ever before. He aches all over. There's a spike being driven into his skull. His hand is tender and sore. But Sam keeps his eyes closed and pretends he doesn't hurt.

* * *

He rolled over in his sleep, and now he's curled on his side, staring out of an opened window overlooking a junkyard of dilapidated cars and overgrown weeds. The sun is glowing orange and the air wafting into the room warm and cool.

Groaning, Sam rolls over to the other side. There's a nightstand next to his head, and on the nightstand is a pack of crackers, the kind that come with soup in restaurants. The water bottle is gone. Sam picks up the crackers, ignoring the note scrawled onto a post-it, bright green, and sticky-ed onto the front of the crackers. He can't read it anyway. He just tears off the plastic wrap and throws it back onto the nightstand. He sticks the crackers in his mouth, both at the same time, and he chews them frantically; he knows if he doesn't eat when he has the chance he might not eat for who knows how long. He doesn't need to eat to survive, of course, but he still feels the hunger, even here, so he eats both crackers in ten seconds flat, and then he's left sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at his surroundings, trying to get his bearings.

The post-it had fallen onto the floor when Sam had tossed the plastic away, and one word catches his eye. It makes him want to hurl.

Sam's eyes fill with tears, his heart clenches, and his stomach flips. He can't help but think that maybe this time it really was him. He came, and he left Sam food, and he drove the devil away, giving him a brief respite.

Sam's own guardian angel.

_Dean. _

* * *

Next thing he knows he's squatting by a toilet with someone kneeling behind him. _Dean_, he thinks, and then he empties the contents of his stomach into the toilet.

"I thought you'd be okay," Dean mutters behind him. He's quiet for a while, letting Sam catch his breath, maybe process what was happening. "Maybe it has nothing to do with the crackers," he suggests.

Sam doesn't really know what the hell Dean is talking about, he doesn't really know anything. He leans back into Dean, and Dean doesn't seem to mind.

"How long have we been in here?" Sam asks weakly.

Sam feels Dean shrug. "A couple of hours," Dean says. Relief floods his voice, but Sam doesn't know why the mention of a couple of grown men cramped up in a bathroom would elicit that kind of feeling. "You vomit every half hour or so."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Sam continues this pattern, leaning back against Dean's warm, solid body without ever looking him in the eye, and then, every half hour or so, throwing up until there's nothing left, until his throat is so raw and torn up he thinks he can taste it, and Dean is dozing against the bathtub. Sam doesn't puke for an hour. His back hurts. He pokes Dean without looking at him. Dean blinks at Sam groggily and grunts.

"Yeah, okay," he says. "Brush your teeth. And maybe take a shower."

Dean helps Sam up, and Sam looks into Dean's tired eyes. They're listless green, but they're green and not gray or blue or red or black or flashing. Maybe this time it really was him. Sam brushes his teeth with Dean hovering over his shoulder, and then, they both pause.

"You gonna watch me shower?" Sam asks. He's joking. At least, he thinks he is.

"Only if you want me to," Dean replies, and Sam's still kind of hazy on all of this joking business, but he's pretty sure that Dean isn't.

In the end, Dean stands outside the shower but inside the bathroom in case Sam needs help. He stands at attention until Sam steps out, dripping wet, and pulls on boxers over his damp legs. Then, he leans on Dean for support all the way back to bed.

Sam sits down, all cozy in fresh sweat pants and a clean shirt and looks into Dean's limp eyes. "Am I okay?" he asks. He lies down without waiting for the answer, because he can hardly see straight sitting up, and stares up at the ceiling. He can't remember anything that happened before he woke up in the bathroom with Dean. Just a lot of pain, and deep, unsettling, freezing hopelessness. And Dean. He remembers, at least, that he can remember Dean, that Dean will tell Sam the truth, and that's what Sam needs, most of all.

Sam rolls over onto his side to look at him.

Dean squeezes his eyes shut tiredly, and for a moment Sam panics, but he opens them up again and they're still green. "Yeah, Sam," he says. "I think you're okay."

That's enough for Sam, so he smiles and falls asleep.

* * *

Sam peels his eyes open and he's met with visions and memories of all that's happened, and it's enough to pull him back under. But he doesn't pass out. He pushes it back, because it doesn't matter. They've got to find Cas, he's got to make sure Dean's okay, so he swings his feet out of bed and lays them on the ground.

The cold of the floor shocks Sam into alertness. He bends over and pulls some socks from his bag onto his feet. His fingers work together and his brain his moving fast enough to remember how to move. He puts jeans on, and stands in the center of the room. If he listens close, beyond all the white noise of the creaking of an old house, and past an imaginary fire crackling sinisterly, he can hear Dean outside, he can hear him working on the car, can hear him complain to Bobby, hear the hopelessness in his voice, and then, Sam hears his name, so he goes downstairs.

He pads, sock-footed, down the stairs, listening as Dean opens the backdoor with a creak, and goes to the fridge to get a beer.

He knows the second he sees Dean's broad shoulders hunched over like he's carrying the weight of the world on them that he's going to be okay.

"Hey, Dean," he says.

Dean turns and doesn't smile, but at least they're his eyes staring up at Sam. "Hi, Sam," he says. His voice cracks. "Look at you."


End file.
